612 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



Point, appears in isolated vastness the English Residency, which was formerly 

 the house of Bishop Tozer and his scanty flock of youthful converts. If you 

 start again from that central and prominent point, the Palace of his Highness, 

 and intend to take a searching view of the salient objects of observation along 

 the sea front of the town, you will observe that to the left of the water battery 

 are a number of sheds roofed with palm fronds, and that in front of these is 

 about the only thing resembling a wharf visible on the beach. This, you will 

 be told, is the Zanzibar Custom House. There may be a native dhow dis- 

 charging her cargo, and lines of burly strong labourers come and go — go and 

 come — continually bearing to the Custom House bales, packages, ivory tusks, 

 and what not, and returning for fresh burdens ; while on the wharf turbaned 

 Arabs and long-shirted half-castes either superintend the work, or, from idle 

 curiosity, stand by to look on. Moving the eye leftward of the Custom House 

 to a building of noble dimensions, you will see that mixture of richness of 

 woodwork with unkempt slovenliness and general untidiness or semi-decay, 

 which attracts the traveller in almost all large Turkish and Arab houses, 

 whether in Turkey, Egypt, or Arabia. This is the new Palace of Prince 

 Burghash. The dark-brown verandah, with its open lattice work, interlaced 

 bars of wood, and infinitesimal carving — the best work of an Arab artisan — 

 strikes one as peculiarly adapted for a glowing climate like this of Zanzibar. 

 But if the eye surmounts that woodwork it will find itself shocked at observ- 

 ing the half-finished roof and the seams of light which fall through it, and 

 the dingy whitewash and the semi-ruinous state of the upper part of the struc- 

 ture. A little left of this, stand two palatial buildings, which for size dwarf 

 even the British Residency. One is the house of Nassur bin Said, the Prime 

 Minister of his Highness ; the other is inhabited by the Sultan's harem. Be- 

 yond these large buildings are not many more. The compact line of solid 

 buildings becomes broken by unsightly sheds with thatched roofs. This is the 

 Melinde quarter, a place devoted to the sale of fish, fruit, etc., to which new 

 European arrivals are banished to seek residences among the few stone houses 

 to be found there. Past Melinde is the shallow Malagash inlet — the cause, I 

 may say the main, perhaps the only cause of the unhealthiness of the town 

 of Zanzibar — and beyond the Malagash inlet extends the country, like a rich, 

 prolific garden, teeming with tropical plants and trees, sloping gently upward 

 as far as the purpling ridges of Elaysu. 



" Such is Zanzibar and its suburbs to the new arrival, as he attempts to 

 note down his observations from shipboard. Descending the side ladder, he 

 is rowed ashore, and if he has a letter of introduction is welcomed by some 

 ' noble specimen of a British merchant,' or an ' American merchant of thirty- 

 five or forty years' standing,' or a British official, or by one of those indescrib- 

 ables who have found their way into Zanzibar, and who patiently bide for the 

 good time that is reported and believed to be coming ; for I find that Zanzibar, 



